and self-government to those peoples who had
been forcibly deprived of them by the aggressor
nations. Interim governments representing all
democratic elements were to be set up, followed
later by governments established ‘through free
elections’. This apparently unambiguous under-
taking was ambiguous after all because it permit-
ted only ‘democratic and anti-Nazi parties’ to put
up candidates. The Soviet Union twisted this to
suit its own purpose of securing communist-
dominated governments.
Churchill and Roosevelt wanted more specific
arrangements for Poland to ensure that the Lublin
provisional government, subservient to Moscow,
would be replaced by a broad coalition, including
exiled Polish leaders from the London-based gov-
ernment. The British and American ambassadors
in Moscow, together with the Soviet foreign min-
ister Vyacheslav Molotov, were to facilitate nego-
tiations between the rival Polish governments in
Lublin and London. Once a unified provisional
government had been established, free elections
were to be held. The suspicious Stalin had agreed
to this for the sake of Allied unity before the final
defeat of Germany. As the Red Army was in occu-
pation of Poland he held all the cards and believed
that there were enough loopholes in the Yalta
agreement to ensure Soviet control in reality. For
the Soviet Union an independent Poland in the
post-war world was likely to be a hostile Poland,
so its future was, for Stalin, a critical issue. Yalta
had only papered over the cracks between West
and East.
One reason why Roosevelt had been concilia-
tory in dealing with Stalin, frequently isolating
Churchill, was his anxiety to secure Soviet help
against the large Japanese armies deployed in
China and in the Japanese home islands. The
future of the atom bomb was still in doubt.
Roosevelt told Stalin nothing about the progress
that had been made. Actually, through agents,
Stalin was already well informed. But it still
appeared likely in February 1945 that the defeat
of Japan would require bitter fighting, culminat-
ing in the invasion of mainland Japan, fanatically
defended by the Japanese. Stalin at Yalta agreed
to the Soviet Union’s entry into the Pacific war
two or three months after the defeat of Germany,
but he named his price. With American lives at
stake, Roosevelt did not allow anti-imperialist
sentiments to stand in the way. Stalin demanded
that Japan should relinquish southern Sakhalin
and the Kurile Islands and that China should
concede the warm-water port of Dairen and use
of the Manchurian railway. The former imperial
rights that tsarist Russia had enjoyed in China
before 1904 were to be restored to the Soviet
Union. The Chinese were not consulted, though
in one part of their secret agreement it was stated
that Chiang Kai-shek’s consent was to be secured;
but elsewhere, inconsistently, another paragraph
was included: ‘The Heads of the three Great
Powers have agreed that these claims of the Soviet
Union shall be unquestionably fulfilled after
Japan has been defeated.’ Stalin also promised to
support efforts to bring about the cooperation
of the Chinese Nationalists and the communists.
For him this had the advantage of preventing
the far more numerous Nationalists from simply
attempting to wipe out the communists once the
war with Japan was over.
Although Roosevelt had conceded Soviet pre-
dominance in Manchuria, he believed he had
done his best to strengthen the post-war position
of a weak China and that he had reduced the risk
of civil war. The actual consequences of his
diplomacy turned out differently and Harry S.
Truman, his successor, did not welcome the last-
minute Soviet declaration of war on Japan.
Roosevelt in public spoke of Yalta as a triumph
and a new beginning that would see the replac-
ing of alliances and spheres of influence by the
new international organisation of the United
Nations. In private he was far more doubtful
whether Stalin would fulfil what he had promised.
But the war against Japan was still to be won and
in the new year of 1945 he would contemplate
no confrontation with the Soviet Union in
Eastern or central Europe. Cooperation with
Russia was possible, he believed, but he was at
one with Churchill in concluding that firmness
in dealing with Stalin was equally necessary.
Roosevelt was not duped by Stalin but he could
see no peaceful future unless coexistence could
somehow be made to work. It was best to express
confidence rather than misgivings.
1
THE VICTORY OF THE ALLIES, 1941–5 295
